"Editorial choices perhaps explain the short shrift given the black power period. More than half of Branch's nearly 800-page text deals with 1965. Of course, 1965 was a momentous year, and the centennial of Lee's surrender at Appomattox witnessed the Selma campaign, the Voting Rights Act, the first commitment of large numbers of American servicemen to Southeast Asia and the Watts riots. Yet the following years were important as well, and one wonders if the decision to avoid more substantive discussions of the final two years of King's life implies that, by 1967, Americans were no longer living 'in the King years.'"
Historian Daniel Widener of the University of California, San Diego, reviews Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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